This section is intended to introduce the reader to various aspects of art, which may be related to various aspects of the present invention that are described and/or claimed below. This discussion is believed to be helpful in providing the reader with background information to facilitate a better understanding of the various aspects of the present invention. Accordingly, it should be understood that these statements are to be read in this light, and not as admissions of prior art.
DRM solution are often considered as user unfriendly, a common complaint being that DRMs prohibit fair use as defined by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, 1998 [see http://www.copyright.gov/legislation/dmca.pdf]. Among the many things considered as part of fair use is the right of an end user to cite or use an excerpt of a work, i.e. content item, for criticism, scholarship and so on. This is however not possible with the prior art DRM solutions.
It will therefore be appreciated that there is a need for a DRM solution that can:                Protect a content item against illegal or unauthorized use.        Allow an end user to extract a portion of the content item and redistribute the portion to other end users who may then access the portion, regardless of whether or not these end users have access rights to the entire content item.        Make it difficult for colluding end users to distribute an entire work freely by concatenating a set of excerpts of the work.        
The present invention provides a part of such a solution: to wit, it enables an end user to extract an excerpt of the content item and send the excerpt to another end user that may then access the excerpt.